The numbers were reported by Hamas. The UN merely used those numbers.

Tell me why we should put blind faith into anything published by Hamas?

I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.

Depends on what the majority of people are using.

In markets where iPhone users are not in the majority, that’s exactly what’s happening: iPhone users are switching to third party apps.

If iPhones users are in the majority, though, then people will just default to iMessage, and non-Apple phones get associated with poor messaging quality. Which creates social pressure for non-iPhone users to buy an iPhone.

So it makes perfect business sense for Apple to degrade the messaging quality when a non-Apple phone joins the conversation.

Must eradicate it.

For the safety and security of our users!

Not all iMessage features can be mapped to RCS, so unless Apple brings iMessage to other platforms, non-Apple phones will always be associated with an inferior messaging experience.

Because the IDF reported those numbers, and if the IDF reports those numbers, that means you were right?

Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified

The reaction from Apple users is to blame Android users - which is entirely unjustified.

But of course, post purchase rationalization and brand loyalty play a big part in why people want to externalize blame rather than questioning their own decision or blaming their favorite company for providing a shitty cross-platform messaging experience.

You mean we should believe the numbers when the IDF is reporting them?

Beeper already deregistered the numbers, but it takes 24 to 36 hours for Apple servers to forget the deregistered numbers.

The two things go hand in hand, though.

Degraded messaging gets branded with green bubbles. Green bubbles - i.e. non-Apple phones - get associated with degraded messaging. Non-Apple phones get pidgeon-holed as crappy phones for messaging. People get bullied into buying iPhones.

Ah yes, poor genocidal Israel is being held to “a different standard” after killing more children and journalists within a month than has ever happened in recorded history.

You’ve never actually opened a history book, right?

Poor souls, clearly everyone is only criticising them because they are Jewish, not because they are an apartheid ethnostate (and since fucking when are ethnostates a good thing).

We’ve just been over this.

Your argument would hold water if people criticized other nations doing the exact same thing in the exact same way they criticize Israel.

That’s not the case - so something has to be different.

I think you are delusional.

I think your hatred for Israel blinds you.

You’re really puzzled that a nation founded as a Jewish ethnostate is being held to an entirely different standard than virtually any other nation in the world? And yet you’re here, commenting on the Palestinian-Israel conflict?

Nah, you have a brain, you know why.

Dude, we’re having a personal, one-on-one conversation. If I didn’t want to hear your opinion, I wouldn’t have bothered asking you a question in the first place.

I’m just interested in why people have a radically different standard for Israel than for Gaza or Hamas or Palestine. I’m interested why people are a-okay with saying “fuck Israel” or “Israel is a terrorist state” or “Israel is committing genocide,” but then don’t have the heart to use the exact same standards for Gaza/Hamas/Palestine.

And clearly, you don’t.

When asked a fairly straightforward question, instead of saying something like “if Hamas does the exact same thing that the IDF is doing, then they deserve the same label,” it seems that you’re getting all defensive. As if you simply don’t have it on your heart to say something like “fuck Hamas.”

I may be wrong, but that’s certainly how it comes across. And I don’t mean to pick on you personally, either. There’s a ton of people around who will say “Israel is a terrorist state because they’re murdering innocent civilians,” but those same people just can’t bring themselves to say anything negative about Hamas, even when it’s pointed out that Hamas has absolutely zero problems murdering hundreds of civilians and even though Hamas keeps loudly telling everyone that they will keep on murdering innocent civilians in the future, and that anyone who murders innocent Israeli civilians is a hero.

I think that’s worth noticing.

Because Israel always gets held to a different standard.

Now the question is: why is that?

Saying Fuck Gaza is like saying fuck Wyoming, so sure why not? We say fuck Texas, or fuck Florida all the time.

The West Bank is ruled by Fatah. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, partly because after Israel withdrew from Gaza, removed all Israeli settlers in Gaza, tore down illegal Israeli settlements and handed over other Israeli infrastructure to the Palestinians, Hamas got into power and never held elections again. Oh, and they also murdered Fatah members and instituted a de facto dictatorship.

So it makes sense to look at Gaza separately from the West Bank.

Saying fuck Palestine would be the equivalent to Saying fuck Israel.

Well, all right then: are you okay with people saying 'Fuck Palestine" if they just dislike Hamas?

Just because no one said that about America doesn’t mean this one isn’t genocide. Just because one nation got away with it in the past does not make this any less genocide than it is.

That’s right.

However, if incredibly different standards are being used depending on the nation in question, that certainly raises suspicions that people are not actually criticizing the act (a military intervention to combat a terrorist organization), but rather the nation itself.

If two countries can have the exact same experience (a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of its citizens), react to that in the exact same way (a military intervention determined to root out there terrorist organization at any cost, willingly accepting that thousands of civilians are being killed as “collateral damage”), but one gets accused of committing genocide while the other one gets celebrated (remember “Mission Accomplished” or the spontaneous celebrations when bin Laden was killed?), doesn’t that warrant the question why identical actions get treated so differently?

It took decades to build a strong case against genocide in Israel. It’s not a word people toss around lightly.

America occupied Iraq and Afghanistan for decades. Why wasn’t the same “strong case” never built against America? Why are people accusing Israel of genocide for killing thousands, but nobody has ever bothered accusing America of genocide for causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands?

You say that America is to powerful, that nobody could stand in it’s way - but that shouldn’t have stopped human rights organizations from saying that America is committing genocide, that shouldn’t have stopped the UN from accusing America of genocide, that shouldn’t have stopped people to demonstrate in the streets with Iraqi or Afghan flags demanding “free Afghanistan.”

Why did none of that happen?

Would you apply those same standards to Gaza?

Would you say you hate “Gaza” if you hated the government that rules it, but not the millions of Palestinians living there?

Would you say “fuck Gaza” if you had no issues with the majority of Palestinians?

Because to me, it just seems that people apply wildly different standards. People seem to explain “here is my standard” when talking about one side, and then they absolutely refuse to adhere to their own standard when talking about the other side.

They could also apply asymmetric warfare strictly against military targets, and guerilla movements in other conflicts have done exactly that.

Nobody forces Hamas to murder civilians. It’s something they’re doing out of their own volition.

I’m not defending the tactics used by the Israeli military.

At the same time, they’re using tactics that are pretty similar to the tactics used by the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan - yet even back then, despite all the opposition took America’s military interventions, we didn’t see people around the world claim that America was committing genocide or that America was s terrorist state.

Yet those labels are constantly applied to Israel.

Why do you think there’s this difference?

And I never said that, either. I was asking whether or not somegeek was equating Israel with all Israelis, since they didn’t make a distinction (e.g. by saying “the state of Israel” or “the IDF” or “the Netanyahu administration”).

Seems fair in light of the broad statement made by somegeek.